UFC champion Israel Adesanya threatens to get violent after home country of New Zealand denies re-entry
It appears as though Israel Adesanya is getting impatient with regards to his return back home to New Zealand.
The reigning UFC middleweight champion, as it turns out, has been stuck in the United States thanks to New Zealand's newly-implemented Isolation Voucher.
According to Adesanya's head coach Eugene Bareman, the Isolation Voucher was put in place while they were at Fight Island in Abu Dhabi. Adesanya, along with City Kickboxing teammates Brad Riddell and Carlos Ulberg just missed out on the window to get back home.
Unfortunately for Israel Adesanya and company, there won't be any vouchers available until December 11th, as explained by Bareman on Submission Radio:
"So what exactly happened is that they fell into a funny place where they booked the flights to the states or UFC booked flights to the states and back again outside of the time when this new voucher system came in. With this new voucher system, you need a voucher on the same date, that allows you to come into the country on the same day as your flight. So, UFC wasn't aware of the system and we weren't aware of the system. The system came in when we were actually in Fight Island, and we just got caught out a little bit to be honest, and unfortunately, there's no vouchers available to come into the country until the 11th of December."
Being away from home for such a long time appears to be getting to Israel Adesanya, who has threatened to get a little violent, so to speak:
"If I threaten to go postal and murk mofos, will they deem me worthy enough of coming home then? I wanna play by the rules y'all set. Also asking for a friend."
Obviously, Israel Adesanya is just speaking out of frustration, but his impatience is definitely understandable.
New Zealand has been one of the best countries in the world in terms of COVID-19 response, with just at total of 2039 cases, and just 44 since November 10th.
Israel Adesanya spending time in the US productively
Israel Adesanya may be stuck in the US for a couple more weeks, but he hasn't been putting the days to waste.
According to head coach Eugene Bareman, Adesanya has been working on his ground game at Atos Jiu-Jitsu in San Diego, California, one of the most well-renowned Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu academies in the world:
"In terms of the preparation night, they're going to be back with still plenty of time for us to prepare for any upcoming fights. If anything at the moment they're at one of the best jiu-jitsu clubs in the world training their a*s off which is probably something they wouldn't be doing if they were back home. They'd probably be in a little more of a holiday mode, so to speak. If anything it's probably helping us."
Israel Adesanya himself posted a video on Twitter of him rolling with BJJ legend and Atos co-founder Andre Galvao:
Israel Adesanya is expected to challenge Jan Blachowicz for the UFC light heavyweight championship in 2021.